The Forager

Working within Campari's innovation world at The Gild, the brief was one of the most exciting we'd had: what's the future of whiskey? We ran a major workshop, generated twenty concepts across completely different territories and consumer spaces. I was in the room sketching and concepting in real time, pushing the thinking, making the ideas visible as they landed.

The Forager was one of the twenty. A botanical Canadian whisky steeped in five wild botanicals: juniper berries, Labrador tea, mugwort, sweet fern and spruce tips. Light, fresh and unlike anything else in the category. When all twenty concepts went into testing, The Forager performed at the top. My original concept design tested strongest. It went straight into production artwork without a single redesign. On shelf within months. Described on launch as the world's first botanical Canadian whisky. Still selling well today across Canada. That's the power of nailing the idea before you spend money on execution.

Campari Cask Tales

This one was pure strategy and storytelling and genuinely one of the most fun creative challenges of my career. Campari Cask Tales was a limited edition expression of one of the most iconic and untouchable aperitifs in the world. Campari bitter, aged in carefully selected ex-bourbon, rum and tequila casks for around six months. Three expressions. Three completely different stories. Three new ways into a brand that hadn't really changed since 1860.

Our job was to figure out how to tell that story. How to build a brand world beyond the bottle. How to visually and creatively express something that felt genuinely new while honouring over 150 years of heritage. The marketing plan. The creative direction. Every touchpoint. Every detail. The launch was celebrated by bartenders across the globe and the collection has since expanded into rum and tequila finishes alongside the original bourbon. When you're working with a brand as iconic as Campari, the bar is high. We cleared it.

The Bottega

In 2019, while consulting at The Gild, I led the innovation and concepting work for Campari's Cinzano 1757. The brief was to sharpen the brand's proposition and move it boldly into craft and apothecary territory. We developed the Cinzano Bottega concept rooted in the brothers' original Turin workshop, led by named botanicals, aged for longer than the category standard and built specifically for the bartender community.

Seven years later, Campari launched Bottega Cinzano 1757. The name. The story. The Bottega. The Artemisia. The bartender positioning. The 90 day resting process. All of it. Presented at the Vermouth Show in Turin, the city where the Cinzano brothers first opened their doors in 1757. The bartender community loved it. The press covered it. And the work that started in a workshop at The Gild finally had its moment on the world stage. That's the thing about getting the strategy right at the start. Sometimes it just takes a little patience.